Daily newsletter · Thu 5 Nov 2026
 | Sharespective Wall Street, before morning tea | Daily newsletter Thu 5 Nov 2026 |
 The Gridlock Rally Plus: Uber's delivery business is now growing faster than its taxis. |
Good morning. Democrats won both chambers of Congress and American shares had their best day since April last year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1,569 points, or 3.03%, to 53,356.12, its biggest post-midterm gain since 1982.
Oil had another bad day. Brent settled at US$94.62 a barrel, down 8.7%, after Vice President JD Vance blamed the Republican losses on the Iran war. The market heard a man arguing for a deal.
In company news, Amdocs fell 30.08% after the billing software firm disclosed a contract dispute with T-Mobile and guided fiscal 2027 revenue down by as much as 18%. Elsewhere, FIS dropped 23.57% because it cut its 2026 earnings forecast as its finance chief resigned. Finally, Cricut jumped 49.41% after the crafting-machine company lifted quarterly revenue 11% and declared a special dividend.
Deadlock suits the market.
Market snapshot
S&P 500 7,688.62 ▲ 1.58% | | NASDAQ 25,736.51 ▲ 1.44% | | NZX 50 13,783.00 ▲ 0.46% |
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ASX 200 8,834.50 ▼ 0.59% | | Uber US$69.89 ▲ 4.94% | | Vistra US$120.22 ▼ 13.88% |
| MARKETS |
Markets rallied on the prospect of nothing much getting done
Democrats flipped seven Senate seats on Tuesday, Texas among them, and are projected to hold at least 54. They took the House as well. President Trump said he would accept the results.
So why did Wall Street cheer a result it had not backed? Certainty, mostly. Stock futures fell on Tuesday night and had turned round before New York opened. The S&P 500's 1.58% gain was its second-biggest post-midterm move since 1982, and the NASDAQ's 1.44% its largest since 2018.
Gridlock is the other half of it. A Democratic Congress and a Republican president are unlikely to pass much between them. Deutsche Bank's analysts said that puts a brake on extreme policy and pulls risk premiums down.
One corner of the market went the other way. Texas elected Democrat Gina Hinojosa governor by about seven points, and she campaigned on a moratorium on new data centres. Wells Fargo reckons the state holds about 27% of America's data centre capacity.
Power generators copped it. Vistra fell 13.88% to US$120.22 after a KeyBanc downgrade, and GE Vernova lost 9.31%. Modine, which makes the cooling gear data centres run on, fell 23.9%.
The other side Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Alphabet all rose between 4.5% and 6.3% on the same day, so nobody has written off the AI buildout. Our read is that the market has decided it just got dearer, and that the bill lands with whoever has to find the water and the power. |
| TRANSPORT |
Uber's delivery arm grew 22% while its ride-hailing revenue went backwards
Uber shares closed at US$69.89 on Wednesday, up almost 5%. Gross bookings reached US$59.8 billion for the September quarter, up 20%, and adjusted earnings of 88 US cents a share beat the 86 cents expected.
Mobility is where the trouble sits. Bookings in the ride-hailing division rose 18% to US$29.5 billion, and yet the revenue Uber booked from them fell 2% to US$7.5 billion.
Drivers are the reason. Supply has not kept up with demand in India and Brazil, and tighter immigration has squeezed it in Canada. Dara Khosrowshahi told analysts the company is taking money out of rider discounts and spending it on driver incentives instead.
Delivery did the work. Food and grocery bookings rose 22% to US$28.5 billion, and the revenue from them grew 23% to US$5.5 billion. Free cash flow for the quarter was US$2.5 billion.
What to watch the December-quarter forecast is the soft spot. Uber guided adjusted earnings to between 95 and 99 US cents a share, against the US$1.06 analysts expected. I'd want to see mobility revenue growing again before treating the driver shortage as one bad quarter. |
| RESTAURANTS |
McDonald's US sales fell for the first time in six quarters, and the shares went up
Sales at McDonald's American restaurants open at least a year fell 0.2% in the September quarter. That ends five straight quarters of growth, and the shares rose about 6% on the day.
The fall was smaller than the market had braced for. Analysts had expected 0.5%. Adjusted earnings were US$3.57 a share against the US$3.38 forecast, and operating income rose 7% to US$3.60 billion.
Revenue was the miss. It grew 1% to US$7.16 billion, short of the roughly US$7.29 billion expected. Sales in the licensed markets that include Japan and China grew 4.2%, which carried the quarter.
The whole sector is quiet. Foot traffic across American fast food fell 2.6% over the three months. Chris Kempczinski, the chief executive, put the result down to solid trading across much of the international business.
The catch a gain about four times the market's is generous for a quarter in which American customers came in less often. Margins held up because the average order got bigger, and that works only while people keep trading up. |
Newsworthy numbers
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5.7% New Zealand's unemployment rate in the September quarter, the highest since 2015. Economists had expected it to fall to 5.5%. | | 77% the share of patients whose lymphoma went into complete remission in Lyell Immunopharma's trial of its CAR T-cell therapy. The shares jumped more than 40%. |
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86,000 private sector jobs American employers added in October on ADP's count, against the 69,000 economists expected. | | 73% the prices index in October's ISM services survey. Anything above 50 means service firms are paying more than they did the month before. |
Worth a read
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01 | BNZ falls into line — David Chaston on fixed mortgage rates bunching together after the Reserve Bank's surprise hold. BNZ's one-year rate is now 4.99%, level with its main rivals, and wholesale markets are still shy of pricing a December rise. |
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02 | Canva lays off over 1,200 people amid slowing growth — Ivan Mehta on the Sydney design company cutting 1,271 roles, 22% of its staff, after trimming its revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20%. Melanie Perkins called it Canva's hardest year yet. |
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03 | How Ikea is reskilling employees instead of replacing them — Danny Jensen on the 8,500 staff Ikea retrained to work alongside its chatbot rather than be replaced by it. Customer service revenue went from US$1.17 billion to US$1.37 billion. |
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04 | Physicists step closer to the 'Zeptoverse' after 42-year particle search — the LHCb team at CERN has evidence of a decay that shows up about once in every 10 billion beauty particles. The hunt took 42 years and the result still falls short of the certainty physicists demand. |
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05 | Dachshunds at the center of exhibition in Germany — Kunsthalle Bremen has mounted what it calls the first exhibition devoted to the dachshund in art, taking in Picasso, Hockney and Warhol. Dogs under 30 centimetres may attend on Thursdays and Saturdays. |
Wrapping up
Futures have the odds of a quarter-point Federal Reserve rise in December at about 79%, from 72% on Wednesday, after September job openings came in at 7.52 million. The Fed decides on 9 December, and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand the same day, at 2pm in Auckland and noon in Sydney.
The University of Michigan's first November read on consumer sentiment lands at 4am Saturday in Auckland and 2am in Sydney, where inflation expectations are the line to watch. Australia has household spending figures at 11.30am today in Sydney, and deputy governor Andrew Hauser speaks at the Australian National University at 5.45pm.
USD/NZD eased to 1.78 and USD/AUD to 1.43 as the US dollar softened on the election result.
Two sleeps to the ballot box, New Zealand. Back tomorrow.